


For lack of a bar...

by Arithanas



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 09:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21354019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/pseuds/Arithanas
Summary: The greatest empires are usually lost for the most simple and inconsequential things. In the case of Immortan Joe, it was a bar.
Relationships: The Splendid Angharad/Furiosa
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	For lack of a bar...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glinda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/gifts).

It all started with a fallen bar…

Rictus Erectus wanted her to weld a new bar inside the vault, and Furiosa couldn’t restrain a swell of pride. She picked up the toolbox from her rig and climbed all the way to the vault door. Rictus waited for her with a couple of priceless size five rebar pieces. Furiosa, giddy with success, stood in her place and crossed the massive threshold as soon as the heavy, round door was pulled out of her way.

Furiosa was not usually meant to partake of Immortan Joe’s most valuable content vault. Only he and Miss Giddy were to cast a look on whatever he kept for himself—as was his privilege—but fate allowed her to partake and her life became better at a blinding speed.

Light surprised her, and she marveled at the tall dome. The air was fresh and dusty, free of burnt oil and spilled guzzoline. The place was quiet, too, and mostly bereft of the whole host of valuables Furiosa expected to encounter. She wasn’t planned to take a thing, but she was hoping to feast her eyes with objects of beauty; she had not enjoyed beauty since she was torn from the Green Place. Decaying books against a wall, chairs, and a table with a strange, irregular form distracted her eyes for a couple of minutes, but in the end, she had to get to the work at hand. Hiding her disappointment, she climbed the coiling stairs and found the place where the old bar had broken down. 

Furiosa worked, dislodging the old piece and using clay to reinforce the bottom rail. She wondered for a moment: what was the use of a cage so high on the rock? It was not like that weird table would gain life and climb down the steep, rough walls of the citadel. In the fault, the sun stung her skin less, her sweat was not acid spilled on her work- and wind-weathered skin, and her eyes looked at the horizon while the clay set. 

The day was so clear that Furiosa could almost peer beyond the dunes.

The song took its time to hit her ears, and it took her longer to notice it was her own voice. She had been humming one of the songs of her long lost clan. Tears would have run over her cheeks if her life had left her some to cry.

“It was beautiful,” another voice said behind Furiosa. 

The sound of another female voice shook her. Her vocabulary was sparse and more useful when talking about engines and highways, but something inside her stirred. It was like a valve unplugged itself and moved a camshaft that had been dormant so far. The timing belt inside her chest was boosting new power into her. Furiosa almost felt her frame vibrating. The strangest feeling. Maybe she should visit Organic after she left this vault.

The woman, wrapped in flimsy cotton, climbed to her and looked at the hole where clay had dried. Furiosa extended her arm and used the metal to check the clay. This woman with blond hair extended her hand and looked at Furiosa. Light shone upon the soft curve of her nose and her cheeks like it did over shiny, clean chrome.

“Organic took it away,” Furiosa answered the unasked question with the voice of those used to the loss. “It was useless after the rig flipped over.”

The woman nodded and climbed another two steps. Furiosa felt the weight of her gaze and hurried to plant that bar in its place. Something inside here stirred again and her whole chassis was thumping. Furiosa was not even sure her brakes were in working order.

“You were singing,” the woman sat on the steps and crossed her legs in a strange position. Her naked ankles touched and Furiosa looked at the long, curvy calves. This woman was as finely shaped as the fastest warcar. “What was that?”

“A seeding song.” Furiosa rammed the rebar on the socket. An ounce of precaution saves a ton of fixing. “A woman named K.T. Concannon taught it to me.”

“Seeding…” The woman repeated the word as if it was made-up.

Furiosa didn’t mind her and hammered the rebar in place. The effort made some of the grease run down her face and she rubbed her organic hand over her eyes. The woman sprung to her feet and used a strip from her dress to soak the sweat.

“Don’t work too hard on it,” the woman said with a small smile. “You will make it harder for us to break it again.”

Furiosa felt the need to ask who were they and why did they broke the bar, but she choked it back deftly. Sometimes, it was better to not know. Furiosa couldn’t report things she didn’t know. 

“Look away,” Furiosa warned as she went down to pick up the welding gun, the face mask and the spool of metal wire. 

The woman complied and looked inside the vault, but she didn’t wander far. Furiosa looked at her with curiosity, then shrugged and fixed the new bar to the old one with the planned amount of care, sparks dancing over her metal hand. Once she was it secure and she turned off the flame, she noticed the blond woman was humming her song.

The song of Furiosa’s clan, sung for the first time in years by another woman, made the engine inside her chest rev again. It was not perfect, as it lacked the words, but it carried the spirit of the many mothers.

When the woman stopped, the sun caressed her face again and Furiosa almost felt her knees buckling in awe and wonder. She opened her mouth and began to speak. Her lips formed words, but their sound never reached Furiosa’s ears.

“Furiosa!” Rictus Erectus screamed at the other side of the door. “Come out now.”

Furiosa rolled her eyes at Rictus' antics and repeated, without a voice, the word that that woman tried to convey over Rictus' ruckus: Angharad. Furiosa had heard the name before in hushed whispers reserved to legends, in the language of Valhalla marvels reserved to those who had been witnessed. Rictus kept pounding the door and Angharad kept speaking. It was a plea, and Furiosa could feel it like the revolutions of an engine in her whole body.

“Come back again,” Angharad pleaded, with such a small voice that the thumping of the door almost drowned it out.

“Furiosa!”

With a smile, Furiosa picked up her tools. Changing gears was no trouble. Rictus Erectus, as usual, insisted on a fruitless task, and Furiosa rushed to the door feeling high octane rushing through her veins without looking back.

“Open up!” Furiosa yelled before Rictus had time to scream her name again.

The door opened up, and the humidity of the planting room cooled Furiosa’s head enough. She was ready to tell the hulk that the bars were not secure, that she needed to come back tomorrow and to return frequently.

The vault was brimming with valuables and Furiosa meant to explore Immortan Joe’s treasure at leisure.

**Author's Note:**

> This author takes the chance to express their gratitude to Ashling who beta'd this fic.


End file.
